2018_September-October.indd

the Home Cooking issue

servings into Styrofoam bowls.He reminded each soldier not to forget the shredded cheese. He couldn’t get sour cream but please — don’t forget the cheese! I had never seen the place so full, the people in such inexplicably good spirits. I got my bowl, sat down with a table of strangers and we ate, and it was as though I’d been blasted back home on a cannon. The meal was extraordinary. Not in the way you find at a fine French restaurant, but in the way your mom could whip up something special. It was a stunning success. After the chili achievement, he couldn’t stop there. He had this family spaghetti recipe, and—well, if you thought the chili was something, he said, just wait. It took him a few days to get the neces- sary ingredients (I have no idea where he got them), and in the meantime he made fresh meals at midnight with whatever he had avail- able.Then, the big day.Written on this white- board:Homemade Spaghetti.And again,they came, and what once was a building of perfect desolation — congealing leftovers waiting in industrial food warmers — was a standing- room-only crowd eating a homemade meal 7,000 miles from home. Conversation filled the place. It was lively, even joyful. He never stopped. One morning I saw him

“ ... invariably, whenever I think of home cooking, mymind goes to one of the least hospitable places on the planet. It’s where I learned what home cooking really means.”

negotiating with an engineer, and that evening, a large, serrated- metal grating was waiting for John. It was the sort of thing used for walkways or flooring in construction sites, and here came the locals, laying it atop the firepit. Soon the fires that once gathered soldiers in meager groups of two or three became the largest grill in-country, and John was slapping slabs of beef on it, the smell of barbecue drawing half the camp there. It was midnight, and scores of sleepy- eyed soldiers had come not for food, but for a taste of home. And everyone grabbed paper plates — and John had made beans and potato salad too! — and the once dingy, dimly lit dining facility was suddenly festive. Every seat was taken,

in disappointment. Only a few dozen of us worked nights, and we grabbed our nighttime lunch when we could, which was sometimes at midnight and sometimes at 3:00 a.m.The chow hall in the middle of the night simply wasn’t a place where brothers broke bread. It was where you went when you were hungry, where you downed your chow and then left as quickly as possible. But he would change that, he just knew it. So he started working the breakfast line each day, and he promoted the chili — you’d have sworn that he was going to charge for it — a genuine, homemade meal. Real food. Not this grub, these “provisions,”that we’re serving now. (He didn’t insult the food so much as imply its inferiority; he was, after all, serving those provisions to the commander and first sergeant.)

and there was this sense of camaraderie — it was electrical, spurred on by one guy who wanted to make chili, who just knew it would change everything. And he was right. It did. At the end of our tour, the battalion returned home piecemeal as another was deployed to relieve us. The cooks left first, including John.The midnight meals vanished, and with them, the comfort and gaiety that his family recipes provided. A few weeks later, I was back home. But invariably, whenever I think of home cooking, my mind goes to one of the least hospitable places on the planet. It’s where I learned what home cooking really means.

When the big night came, a whiteboard adorned the exterior of the chow hall. Written there was: Midnight Meal: Chili. I turned up for it, trudging the same dark and icy path as ever — only, when I arrived, I didn’t find the dimly lit, barely standing building I’d become accustomed to. There was a line out the door.The heater was

blasting inside, there was music, and where once there were warming boxes of botulism, there was now an exultant John, aproned and ladling generous

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MY ROUSES EVERYDAY

SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2018